I love sleep!

It's really amazing what a good night's sleep can do. Molly didnt cry at all last night, and only got Stefano up once to go out.  So proud of her!

In case you're wondering, she's sleeping in a crate in our bedroom. We'll move the crate to the den at night eventually. We're working on crate training her, and yesterday was "tough love" day as I was ignoring all her whining and begging for attention. I think it helped though!  Well, that and having Christine over, so we kept her awake longer than we're usually able to.

I'm a little worried about her this weekend... We're having 15-20 people over Saturday for a Halloween party, and we haven't really seen how well she does with groups. I might have to carry her around a lot of the night, so hopefully she doesn't re-learn her clinginess.

Posted using my Android phone

Posted using my Android phone

Molly vs Molly

I know I shouldn't encourage this behavior... But it's so cute!  She doesn't understand that her reflection isn't another puppy.

Happiness is a sleeping puppy

First of all, please note her Halloween collar and toy. Second, I am so grateful she is sleepy today so I can get work done.

Crate training is interesting.  She's actually catching on really quick, and she is crying less and less when we close the door.

Except for last night but that was our fault. We let her nap all evening so she wasn't tired enough to sleep at bedtime, despite us trying to wear her out.

Posted using my Android phone

New family member

Stefano and I have always talked about getting a puppy.  We both had dogs growing up, love dogs, and (almost) everyone here in Colorado has a dog.  We'd been watching this website for a while, and Stefano noticed today that they had a bunch of border collie and aussie shepherd mix puppies in.  So we finally gave in and went to see some puppies.

And we came home with Molly.

We haven't had much luck getting her to sleep in anything other than our arms.  But we've gotten her to fall asleep in her box a few times.  Tonight might be a long night of whining.

For some reason she wanted to sleep like this.

Their best guess is that she's an Australian shepherd mix, but they really don't know.  She must have something else in her too, since she doesn't have the right ears.  She's about 8 weeks old, and came from a shelter in Albuquerque.

So far we're working on getting her housebroken, not chewing or jumping on the furniture, and not whining during dinner.  She's a little clingy right now, but she's still working on adjusting to being in a home and not a shelter.

The things I do for work...

In the words of Thumper from the movie Bambi, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all".

I'm really irritated about my trip this week, so instead of whining about it, I'm going to try to list all the things that have been good about it so far.

• The flight in was easy.  
• The hotel had a free airport shuttle. 
• The hotel room in Sioux Falls was amazing, and the hotel had the nicest gym I've ever seen in a normal (non resort) hotel.  
• There was an Old Chicago next door with tasty food and beer.  
• I got to sleep in until 7:30 this morning.
• My coworker got in on time to pick me up, and we get along well.
• Our hotel in Huron, SD is reasonably nice and clean.
• The wireless internet is not quite as slow as dial-up.
• I'm not as swamped as I was last week, so I don't feel like I need to work at night.

Ok, I'm feeling slightly better.  Sigh.

What does one do with a one-day weekend?

I was out of town for work all of last week. I'm leaving again tomorrow for another work trip, and I'll be gone until Thursday. Unless I have to stay longer.

So we slept in until 10:30 (it felt amazing) and then headed out to the pumpkin patch.

And they had animals!  Goats!!  They had these cute ones that almost looked like puppies.

C'mon, tell me that doesn't look like a puppy?

You weren't supposed to pet them.  But I did anyway.  I'm a rebel like that.

Apparently civil engineering is cool now

 Best Jobs in America 2010 - Top 100: Civil Engineer - Money Magazine on CNNMoney.com 

Pretty cool. I definitely agree its nice to have tangible results of your work.

Posted using my Android phone

VINETHRA

So there's this massive vine that grows up our garage.  I have decided to call it "Vinethra".  I tore most of it down last year but it came back with a vengeance.  I can't actually kill it at the root since it grows between the fence (which separates our yard and the other neighbor's yard).

Anyway.  I would leave it alone (it's kinda pretty), but it's really aggressive and keeps growing into our garage.  Through the roof and/or gutters.

For some reason, the pale, underdeveloped tendrils make my skin crawl.  Gyah!

So anyway.  Tearing it down was fun.  Especially since this plant freaks me out a little with its aggressiveness, and I kept having to take breaks to let the skin-crawling sensation subside.

But I got it all eventually.  And then, I was a typical wife girl, and made Stefano put it all in the compost bin for me. :)

Ah, the joys of home ownership.  Our duplex-neighbors probably would have just left it alone.

Things from the attic

(Sorry the pics were broken.  Should be better now.)

So a little bit of background...  The people we bought our house from never lived there;  they were a couple of developers who fixed places up and sold them.  They were not particularly meticulous and pretty messy in general; we had to put a condition in that they would clean up the construction debris from the garage and crawlspace before we would close.  They moved all the garage garbage over to the neighbor's half of the garage (we share a 2-car garage with the neighbors in the other half of the duplex) and put all the crawlspace debris in a garbage can in the neighbor's half of the garage.

We didn't ask them to clean out the attic, since there was some actual stuff, not construction debris up there, and we didn't want to bother asking them to clean it.  Plus we wanted was this old game of Scrabble that was up there...  In fact it pretty much became a running joke in our stressed out and exhausted minds before closing was that we HAD to get the house; we wanted Scrabble!

So first thing after closing (ok, maybe the 20th thing), we grabbed Scrabble and played.  I don't think we've played since.  We also grabbed a random small shadow-box mounted knot, complete with a clearance sticker on the back.  I believe it cost $2.  It's been sitting on a shelf in my kitchen because the randomness makes me laugh.

Fast forward a year, and we still hadn't cleaned anything out of there.  When we went to get our Halloween boxes out, we decided to actually take out most of the previous previous owner's stuff.  And of course I took pictures to show all of you!

By the way, I wrote "chunk" at first, changed it to "piece", and then changed it back to "chunk".  I'm just trying to be honest here.

The orange blobby thing is a chunk of fake flowers.

The fluff is the loose fiberglass insulation we have in the attic.  Nothing gross.

But wait, what's that brown box?

Why yes, it's another knot in a box.  Identical to the one we had grabbed out of there earlier.  Why he/she had two identical knots in boxes purchased on clearance with the stickers never removed, I will never know.

That's all.  Tune in tomorrow for VINETHRA!!! (that's like mothra, not like vin-i-thra, by the way...)

Our House

I guess it's time for a house tour...

I guess I didn't upload an updated picture of the outside before I went on my trip (and I don't have my computer with me), but here it is all dressed up for Christmas last year.

Here's the view just as you step in: kitchen to your right and our dining "room" table.  The closet you see in the back has our laundry machines in it.

And to the left is our living room.  I love that couch; it fits our 1950s house so well!

Stefano picked out the awesome "life needs more green lights" art, and the print over our bar is something we picked up in Puerto Rico.

Here's a better view of the kitchen.  Again, don't mind the mess.  It's clean sometimes...

Another view of the living room.  I love the huge front window. 

This cool arch leads to the hallway to the bedroom, office, and bathroom.  I don't have a linen closet, so I found this cool thingy from Target to put everything in.

Bathroom.  It's little and cute, but it works if you keep it tidy.

And here's our bedroom.  Probably my favorite room as far as organization and decoration go.

And finally, my office.

And the office also has a futon squeezed in there for guests.  And a desk for Stefano (lower right corner).

So that's the grand house tour!  It's small, and we have a little too much stuff, but it works really well for us.  We love the location-- within the city limits, but it feels like sleepy suburbia most of the time, walkable to shops and restaurants, a big lake park, and even downtown if you feel like walking for 45 minutes (I've done it).

Some of my favorite things about the house itself is that they've kept the 1950s character: coved and tray ceilings, the arch, the doorbell, etc.   Speaking of which... I love that doorbell?  How do I not have a picture of it?  Sigh.  That'll just have to be its own post.

We'd love to have all of you out for a tour some day!

Engineering vs science

 Why science alone will not solve our global problems  

I'm usually not a fan of Petroski's (his writing is pretty dry) but this book sounds pretty good.

I'm gonna try to get caught up on blogging this week. I have a lot of random funny stuff to tell you all about!

Posted using my Android phone

Healthy food

One of my least favorite things about field work is having to eat out for lunch.  Usually fast food, since I'm usually in small towns or traveling between larger ones.  So today it was really nice to have a simple, veggie-based meal.

Cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, green beans, pita chips, hummus, smoked gouda, and a few bagel chips.  Carrie happy.

Potpourri

I must be really excited about going back to Illinois for Thanksgiving-- I had a long, detailed dream about Thanksgiving at my aunt's house last night.  I also slept fantastic, thanks to a thunderstorm at midnight which cooled it off a lot.  It was really nice to finally get some rain, too.

It's been a busy week so far, and will be even busier through the weekend.  Tuesday we had a few friends over to play board games and laugh uncontrollably about ridiculous Halloween decorations.  Good times.

Tonight we're going to see the Blackhawks vs. Avalanche season opener hockey game.  Stefano is super excited.  His dad was able to come out (he flew in yesterday) and our friend Ben is flying in today.

Just to add to the excitement, I'm flying to Chicago tomorrow to see my amazing sister for the weekend (I get to see her run the Chicago Marathon Sunday!).  Then getting back late Sunday night and heading out for 2-4 straight weeks of field work.  More on that later.

To the spider who lives on my porch

To the spider who lives on my porch:

I've tried to kill you before.  You're huge and creepy, and you spin webs that I walk through at least once a week.  But apparently you avoided the hose and hid in the ceiling of my porch, and you lived to spin another day.

I've decided to let you live.  For now.

But just because you're decorating my porch for the Halloween party.

But you're on notice.  Come November 1st, I'm gonna be out there with my can of spider killer, and you're history.

Love,

Carrie